Case study

How Monkey Puzzle enriched their customer insight with accurate demographic data

Identifying franchise sites in areas with the greatest opportunity

Company Background

Monkey Puzzle is the UK’s largest day nursery franchise network, with over 60 nurseries nationwide. For over thirty years, the Monkey Puzzle team has worked closely with parents, staff and Ofsted to deliver childcare of the highest quality, providing children aged three months to five years with unlimited opportunities to learn, develop and grow within a safe, secure and caring environment.

An award-winner in the 2020 Day Nurseries Top 20, Monkey Puzzle is growing strongly. It is always looking for new franchise sites and opportunities, led by a dedicated head office team. Monkey Puzzle also operates a handful of day nurseries directly, providing a benchmark of best practice for franchisees.

The Challenge

Understand the opportunities in franchise locations with enriched local customer insight.

Sophie Hailey is Monkey Puzzle’s Franchising and Property Acquisitions Associate, explains:

Before we engaged with CACI, when we were looking at a new site, the only demographic research we would do was competitor analysis. We would type the site postcode into the OFSTED website and look at comparable sites in a five mile radius. We would mystery shop them to find out about what they offered, the fees and waiting lists, to help us establish a suitable proposition and pricing for our potential new nursery.

When you visit a site, you can get a good feel for a location. This is really important, as is the competitor research, but we needed more information and evidence to back up our decisions, as our network expands. We wanted to give our franchisees confidence as well as committing to the right sites for our model. The more relevant insight we have, the better our decisions can be.

The Approach

Sophie Hailey, Monkey Puzzle’s Franchising and Property Acquisitions Associate talked to CACI about Monkey Puzzle’s franchising and the kind of information that was important in her decision-making process. Acorn and InSite reporting would give Sophie and the team access to valuable customer demographic and local market information to enrich their understanding of new and existing sites and opportunities in the local area. Sophie explains:

The site reports we generate help us to narrow down potential sites quickly – we look at a number of factors about the catchment that tell us whether it’s worth investigating a proposed site further. We can see how close it is to existing sites, so we can avoid cannibalisation, as well as how strong the customer demand might be in the local community and workforce.

The Results

With InSite reporting and Acorn data, Sophie and her colleagues have a clear, shared knowledge base that informs the franchise development process with consistent and up-to-date customer and location information.

Our nurseries are currently gathering postcode information from existing customers, so we can map exactly where they come from in each catchment. This will help us understand our existing customer base better and recommend how to customise the proposition and marketing for different types of location.

Sophie Hailey, Monkey Puzzle’s Franchising and Property Acquisitions Associate

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